Quick Specs

Editors' Review

This speech-recognition program performs certain tasks through voice commands, but you'll endure a confusing setup. HAL, which uses Microsoft Speech Recognition Engine, plays hide-and-seek upon installation and forces you to open the executable from its folder in your Program Files. It displays a plainly designed interface that sent us scrambling to the limited menu options. The program is a big help at that point, with its audio instructions on usage. Speak one of nearly 50 preset voice commands into your microphone, and HAL leaps into action if the app can understand what you've said. (If it can't, you can type in the command into the sole box on the interface.) Some of the available commands are more helpful than others. On the useful side, HAL runs one of several applications, starts an e-mail or reads text, among other options, when you say the phrase. On the frivolous side, HAL will tell you about "himself" and respond to your greetings. We wish we could have created some commands, but this application covers the basic operations. Despite its inauspicious beginning, this freeware works fairly well and will suit most users in the market for such a program.

Publisher's Description

+

From David Henry:
HAL is an Artificial Intelligence (A.I.) program; he can speak in a normal voice and respond to over 45 voice commands from the user. HAL can perform many common computer tasks and read any text for the user. HAL can also start an e-mail message, display PC system information, create a reminder and access the World Wide Web. The HAL speech recognition package included, plus added features MS Media Player interface and daily reminder. There is extensive A.I. help for all areas of the program.

I'm in grad school so I have a lot of reading to do. Sometimes I just can't focus my eyes on the page anymore. So I highlight the text, press CTRL+C and say "Hal, Read Text" and off he goes. I'm using the demo version. I can't type in commands, and he only responds to a few voice commands. I have to repeat myself a lot to get him to read. But once he gets going he reads fast enough that I can get done with a reading pretty quickly. There is a little text bubble that shows the words he's reading at the moment which helps me understand him.

Cons

The text bubble is important because he mispronounces a lot of things and screws up the sentence cadence a lot. I would like to purchase the full version.

I just bought the full version: Hal 3.0 with memory and it works even better than the demo. In the full version I can program hal to give me certain answers. He accepts typed commands. And he emphasizes words that are in "quotes" more than he did in the demo version. I recommend this program for anyone who needs a reader.

You may need to enter voice training data into your computer. Click start, settings, control panel, speech, train profile. Then read some of the text into the microphone so the computer can learn your speaking style.

This program is full of spyware. It attempted to connect to the internet when I installed and ran it. My security software picked it up immediately. I had trouble uninstalling it and it froze my computer several times. DO NO DOWNLOAD

it tries to connect to the internet immediatly after its downloaded.norten firewall told me and scanned it. it said it shouldnt be messed with in lamence terms. when the setup is complete the hard drive starts buzzing w/ all the cd rom drives, and then ejects them and reinserts them, then it tries to get your system over! do not download!!!!!i repeat!!

Well cant say much about the software, it does not even run on WinXP. Also it is no freeware but just a demo(as if the demo is gonna help the creator) so dont waste time downloading this software.....man whoever made it take it off and run on your own PC we dont need it!

This program does not install correctly on XP platforms. I thought maybe there was a problem when downloading so I redownloaded and tried to install to no avail agian. When a program has a license as "free" it should be free, it shouldn't be a trial version that is nearly useless to anyone that downloads it. This is a horrible program DO NOT DONWLOAD!

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